


Advent Calendar Fics

by poetic_nonsense



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 31 Days of Ineffables, Advent Calendar, Drabble Collection, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M, One Shot Collection, Other, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21633115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetic_nonsense/pseuds/poetic_nonsense
Summary: A collection of short fics written fordrawlight's advent calendar challenge.  Expect lots of fluff and silliness.  :)UPDATE:  I did fall off the wagon with these in December, but it's still cold and I'm stubborn so I'm picking up where I left off!  There's too much post-holiday winter anyway.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 78
Kudos: 113





	1. Day 1: Mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

> I'll almost certainly fall behind at some point or other, but until then I mean to have fun with this! Happy holidays to whoever celebrates them!! <3

As a very cunning and wily demon, Crowley was of course adept at hatching schemes, pulling off capers, and enacting shenanigans. But one area he considered a particular forte was the midnight stealth mission.

Which is why it was deeply aggravating that this one was going so poorly.

“Come on, you pathetic little --”

The rest of his quiet swearing was cut off by the bundle of mistletoe he shoved between his teeth to clear up his other hand for fiddling with the non-marking adhesive tack that very determinedly wasn’t affixing itself above a bookshop doorway.

He didn’t even have a ladder, either, for fear of leaving telltale (and unlikely to be appreciated) scuff marks on the floor. Instead he was wobbling atop an end table piled with the faux leather bound modern “collector’s” editions Aziraphale kept for getting rid of particularly implacable customers. Ingenious, those were, and Crowley was equal parts jealous he hadn’t thought them up and convinced Aziraphale had.

Either way, when piled upon a tiny Georgian display table, they were worryingly precarious.

And, to top it all off, there were mistletoe leaves with the audacity to tickle at the roof of his mouth, and they weren’t responding in the slightest to threatening growls or muffled promises of vengeance. This was the sort of pandemonium that happened when you used store-bought plants, but he couldn’t very well have grown mistletoe of his own without Aziraphale noticing. Aziraphale really was getting worryingly attached to his plants. He was starting to have unsettling thoughts about what would happen the next time he needed to make an example of one of them.

But that was a "later" problem, and he certainly wasn't starved for "now" problems.

Crowley wondered with increasing desperation whether he hadn’t had something to do with this adhesive tack business. This horrible blue putty stuff that seemed happy enough to cling to his fingers and not happy at all to anchor a string to the top of a doorframe. It looked malevolent enough to threaten to _stain_ , and Crowley really, _really_ hoped that he hadn’t been involved in the design and that he hadn’t made the stains demonically unremovable, or there would be Hell to pay for ruining Aziraphale’s two hundred year old bookshop wall. Well, not Hell. Something worse.

He didn’t _remember_ working with the stuff, and humans were plenty adroit at making the world a more annoying place by themselves, but there was just something _excessive_ about the awfulness of this stuff, and it seemed like the sort of thing that could _only_ \--

“Crowley?”

Crowley startled badly, and a couple of mistletoe leaves took the opportunity to go straight down the wrong pipe. He coughed and spluttered, and a few more went down the right one, which was hardly more pleasant (but, in the mistletoe’s only act of grace, as he didn’t expect them to be poisonous, they didn’t poison him), and he promptly turned over the table and toppled off with an almighty crash.

“ _Crowley!?_ ”

Crowley gave up hacking and just disappeared the mistletoe in his throat. “‘m fine, angel,” he called, somewhat hoarsely.

“You don’t _sound_ fine. And what are you doing in the shop at this hour? I -- well, I woke up and you weren’t there, and -- well, I thought --”

Crowley felt an actual stab of guilt. It had always taken some convincing to get Aziraphale to settle down to sleep beside him, and Crowley appreciated it, he did, and normally he wouldn’t ever leave Aziraphale’s soft, warm, trusting side --

“Where are you?” Aziraphale sounded as though he were conducting the beginnings of a search.

 _That_ got Crowley moving.

“Don’t -- you don’t need to come after me, Aziraphale, I’m coming,” he blurted, scrambling to his feet and knocking his head against a bookshelf in the process. “I’m coming back to bed, just -- thought I heard a mouse, came to check it out.”

Aziraphale’s voice took a worried turn, and it seemed to come from the central rotunda, so Crowley booked it there as casually as he could manage. “Mice? I certainly hope not. I’ve never had problems with them before. Not that they’re not important -- one of God’s creatures, and all that, all things great and small -- but they do have a habit of nibbling at books, and I’ve just got a new Alexander Balfour in.”

Aziraphale was standing under the faint light-pollution glow from the skylight, in his pinstriped pyjamas, checkered robe, and ridiculous little tasselled nightcap, looking fussy and Victorian and like the love of Crowley’s existence. He only tolerated sleeping once in a blue moon, when Crowley managed to be particularly persuasive, but he had, of course, taken the opportunity to avail himself of a new area of fashion. Crowley loved him.

He was also peering into the shadowy stacks in completely the wrong direction, and Crowley stepped up and took his arm and received a startled jump and a warm smile for his trouble. “No mice, angel. I checked.”

“Oh. Oh, good. Thank you my dear, ever-vigilant.” Aziraphale steered them gently back toward the stairs up to the bedroom, and Crowley followed, silently thanking -- something, his own skill and resourcefulness probably -- that he’d managed to make a save there.

“If there were mice, you would have… eaten them?” Aziraphale asked, sounding curious and eager and reluctant at once.

Crowley took a moment to catch back up.

“Wha -- oh. No. Mice taste horrible, and besides, just eating it is a waste of an opportunity. I’d make like I was _going_ to eat it, and let it escape just by the fur of its… somewhere it has fur, and go back to tell all the other mice about the big, hungry, bookshop-guarding serpent.”

Aziraphale looked enchanted. “Oh, you marvelous thing. That’s ever so wily of you, my dear. And I suppose my Andreaes would remain safe for generations, wouldn’t they?”

“Right up until the world doesn’t end again, angel,” Crowley said, with a grin that felt particularly toothy.

\----------------------------------------

Aziraphale was at a loss as to what was going on. This morning, Crowley had risen at the unusually early hour of quarter-to-eleven, dropped a kiss on his cheek, and disappeared back into the depths of the bookshop with something about a project, very evil, don't concern yourself, Aziraphale, don't you have filing to do?

It was tremendously odd, and Aziraphale did start to worry just a little about mice again. Perhaps Crowley was no longer so confident in his assessment of the previous night?

But he did have a bit of translation he’d meant to do today, and he had to properly inspect his new volumes, and he trusted Crowley to handle the situation, if there was one. So he mostly kept to his own little work area, with a half-forgotten mug of cocoa keeping him company against the chill drifting from the window, and didn’t dwell much on the occasional curse or clatter coming from the depths of the shop.

By the early afternoon, he’d finished with the fragile new volumes -- a few minor cautions were in order, and one of the books needed to be re-bound -- and was scratching his chin absentmindedly with the end of his pen as he wondered how to translate a bit of Latin. Gellius always made the most abominable puns.

“Hey, Aziraphale!”

The call came as a surprise, and Aziraphale paused to decipher the tone. It didn’t sound alarmed. A little nervous, maybe.

“Yes, my dear?”

It felt odd, raising his voice to call back in the quiet peace of the bookshop, but Crowley’s voice answered immediately.

“Can you -- would you come over here? There’s -- I mean -- I’ve got something to show you.”

“Certainly,” Aziraphale said, rising and looking about. “...where is ‘here,’ exactly?”

“Side room, where you keep the stuff you don’t want customers touching even a little,” came the reply.

Aziraphale made his way over, curious and a smidge concerned.

Crowley was standing just past the door, hands stuffed in his tiny pockets, and he cracked a lopsided smile at Aziraphale when he rounded the last bookshelf, like he’d missed him, and Aziraphale’s heart gave a pleasant little sideways lurch. He smiled back, momentarily forgetting his thoughts about mice.

Crowley raised his eyebrows after a second or two, and gestured with his chin up toward the lintel. “Well?” he asked, and almost succeeded in sounding like he didn’t particularly care.

Aziraphale looked up.

A bundle of leaves with little white berries dangled from the doorway on a string.

Aziraphale frowned and tried to be diplomatic. “My dear, if you absolutely _must_ torment your plants, and I do admit this looks _inventive_ … I would at least ask that you don’t do it in the shop.”

Crowley made a strangled, disbelieving sound. “No -- angel -- it’s -- you know what day it is, right?”

Aziraphale tried to remember. It wasn’t as if he had _cause_ to remember, all the time, exactly, unless he had an appointment made, and while interest in the shop had seemed to have picked up a bit over the past week, he didn’t exactly have anything on his schedule at the moment. “... Thursday?”

Crowley’s hands came out of the pockets only to be thrown in the air with a disbelieving scoff. “It’s _December_ , angel,” Crowley told him, and gave him a significant look.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said slowly.

_Oh._

His eyes shot back up to the little spray of leaves dangling from the ceiling, and back down to Crowley, whose hands were jammed back into his skintight pockets and whose eyes were studiously avoiding Aziraphale’s. His mouth was pursed into a little line of determination, and his stance was at once both standoffish and vulnerable.

“Oh, _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale sighed, feeling an immeasurable and thoroughly familiar rush of affectionate warmth. He stepped up to the other side of the doorway and held out his hands toward Crowley’s face. “Come here, you silly old thing,” he entreated fondly.

Crowley’s mouth moved as though grumbling, but he stepped forward into the reach of Aziraphale’s palms, still choosing to study Aziraphale’s chin rather than meet his eyes.

Aziraphale smoothed his thumbs over Crowley’s cheekbones and pulled him in gently for a kiss. Crowley made a high-pitched noise and Aziraphale felt him succeed in extracting his hands from his pockets on the second try, and then two long and bony arms were winding around Aziraphale with an impressive amount of clinging strength.

Aziraphale had meant the kiss to be fairly chaste, but then Crowley made a noise and Aziraphale added a bit of tongue and it all followed fairly quickly from there.

When they parted, they were both thoroughly out of breath, and Crowley tipped their foreheads together so they could look more closely into each other’s eyes while they panted for a minute. (Strictly speaking, this wasn’t necessary, but it was pleasant, which took precedence.)

“We’re _married_ ,” Aziraphale reminded Crowley with not a little fond amusement. “You kiss me _every day_.”

“Yes, but -- oh, _shut up_ ,” Crowley rebutted, but as he was still panting it wasn’t quite as caustic as he might have hoped. “It’s the spirit of the thing.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed, still on the verge of a chuckle. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

He kissed Crowley again, for good measure, and then he did laugh, not quite against Crowley’s lips but nearly, his hand still cupped around Crowley’s cheek.

“What?” asked Crowley, who seemed to be getting over his terribly endearing case of nerves, if his delighted little grin was anything to go by.

“This particular mistletoe has done an absolutely terrible job of keeping demons away,” he explained with a little smile which was silly and didn’t care. “And I am tremendously thankful for the fact.”

It was hard to say who kissed who, this time, but both parties were enthusiastic and nobody minded enough to follow up on the subject.

(Two weeks later, the mistletoe having been impudent enough to wither and a new bunch installed above the sofa in the back room, Aziraphale discovered a fist-sized ring of blue residue on the wall above the doorframe, and _that_ he minded enough to employ a selection of choice words about when he succeeded in tracking Crowley down.)


	2. Day 2: Snow(ed In)

“We’re snowed in,” Crowley said disconsolately.

Curious, Aziraphale poked his head into the windowframe alongside Crowley’s. “It appears so.”

“We’re in _London,_ ” Crowley whined, in the sort of tone that suggested he didn’t think he was whining.

“That we are.”

“You don’t _get_ snow in London. Not _real_ snow, at any rate. Just enough sometimes to look like there might be real snow, just for a moment, and then disappear by the time anyone’s mum lets them out to play, and that was _my_ idea. Well, sort of, Naberus was the one who pinched it and turned it on kids. My idea was to make it look like you might have to drive in it to get to work, just enough to make you think about whether you might need to buy snow tires this year, get your day off to a bad start, and then disappear by the time you leave for work.”

“Mm,” said Aziraphale, who was well used to Crowley getting sidetracked on a rant, and knew that the chances of it ultimately distracting him from his main complaint were very slim indeed. He fetched a throw blanket from the nearby desk chair, and draped it across Crowley’s shoulders.

“Which is doubly ingenious, mind, as it means you actually get to work to take it out on your colleagues rather than anyone actually having accidents and ending up at the hospital, where that level of irritation would barely make a dent in the amount of hellishness that goes down in hospitals every day, but it _also_ gives you that feeling that you’re irritated over nothing. And _that_ is a guaranteed multiplier for bad moods.”

“Sounds terribly evil.” Aziraphale miracled up a cup of rich, lovely spiced tea, perfectly hot to warm your hands around.

“It _was!_ And it would have been _wildly_ successful. But noooooooooo, Naberus has a weird thing about kids, it’s unhealthy if you ask me, swipes the proposal from the stack and _warps_ it into this -- this -- twisted, petty fun-denying thing, and that’s what gets done up by Head Office! I would have stopped it, if I’d _known_. I tried to bring it to Beelzebub after the fact, but once a policy goes into effect nobody gives enough of a bless to change it. There’s no _point_ going after kids -- their lives are _already_ hell! And they don’t have power over a blessed soul, they can’t _spread_ anything.”

“Your plan sounds much worse, my dear,” Aziraphale said over the rim of his mug, and Crowley seemed to blink back to Earth, looking between him and the window.

“It would have been, if it’d been given a chance -- and don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Aziraphale, you’re _not_ distracting me -- we’ve been _snowed in!_ ”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, dear boy,” said Aziraphale, shifting a little bit closer so that Crowley’s shoulder was pressed up against his as they both stood looking at the half-buried city scene. “But I do wonder if perhaps a bit of snow’s not quite the disaster you’re making it out to be.”

“I had _plans_ ,” Crowley insisted. “ _Today_ plans. For the two of us. You were gonna love it. And now everything’s _closed_ ,” he scowled at the offending blanket of white outside, lying even and pristine across the untraversed road, “and they’re not going to clear any of it by this evening, so there’s not much point, is there?”

“Mm,” said Aziraphale, contemplating this problem. “I’m sure it would have been absolutely lovely, and I’m warmed by the thought, my love. Still, I do think there are some advantages to a snowy day that you haven’t taken into consideration.”

Crowley turned to frown at him. “Advantages?” he asked warily.

“No customers,” Aziraphale said simply, and enjoyed watching Crowley’s eyes go unwillingly wide and considering while he sipped leisurely at his tea. “No point, as you said, in opening the shop at all.”

Crowley seemed to notice the blanket wrapped around his own shoulders for the first time, and his eyes dipped calculatingly to the mug of aromatic tea cradled in Aziraphale’s hands. Aziraphale pressed his advantage.

“There does seem to be some charm in the human tradition of a snowy day in. I do believe I’ve got some spiced cider in the cellar somewhere, and there’s space for a nice big fireplace in the flat upstairs. You could even bring over that gigantic flat monstrosity of a television from your place, and we could watch something with crime-fighting spies or whatnot.”

“I…” Crowley wavered. His eyes flickered briefly to the snowy scene outside, and this seemed to bolster his determination to be sulky. “But the _plans,_ angel,” he said, almost plaintively.

“Well, it can’t be helped at this point. And I do adore that you went to the trouble, my darling, thank you. Besides,” he continued, feeling warm, and his voice went unintentionally soft as his eyes drifted back out the window at the world that was still standing, “we can do it sometime else, can’t we? We… we have time now.”

Aziraphale heard a quiet inhale from beside him, but he couldn’t quite bear to look back at Crowley just yet. Instead he pressed his shoulder just a little more firmly against Crowley’s, and Crowley nudged back, and they stared out at the snow together.

“Yeah,” Crowley said, sounding choked. “Some other time, then.”

And his hand came up to wrap around Aziraphale’s, for which Aziraphale gladly shifted his mug to the other and let Crowley’s fingers twine around his.

Crowley dragged a decisive-sounding breath in, and Aziraphale looked at him, standing cold-fingered and bony and glassesless and _here,_ in the warm solitude of Aziraphale’s snowed-in bookshop. Crowley looked back at him.

“No fireplaces,” Crowley said, quiet and firm. He squeezed Aziraphale’s hand as if in apology. “Not yet.”

Aziraphale squeezed back, and smiled at Crowley with all the quiet joy bubbling in his chest. “Of course.”

\-----------------------------------

As James Bond exploded yet another building, Aziraphale watched in horrified intrigue, mug of cider forgotten halfway to his lips. “He seems to _do_ rather more crime than he prevents, doesn’t he?”

“That’s not the _point,_ angel,” Crowley huffed from the other side of the couch, and then he wriggled down further under the blanket and stuck his icy toes right under Aziraphale’s waistcoat.

“Then what -- ah! That really is -- remarkably cool, my dear -- what _is_ the point?”

“The _point_ is that he’s charming and cool.” Crowley was on his fifth mug of cider, and had by this point given in to the siren call of warmth and pulled his throw blanket up to drape over his head.

Aziraphale squinted at the screen. “Are you sure?”

“ _Angel,_ ” Crowley complained, in a voice at once petulant and warning.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “What I mean is, he doesn’t hold a candle to you, dear.”

“Damn right,” Crowley said, and refilled both their mugs.


	3. Day 3: Nutcracker

It was two-fifteen in the morning in fair London town, and an angel and a demon were wandering the streets. They did not know _why_ they were wandering the streets, exactly, but the streets were quiet, which was nice for when you wanted to argue, and it was difficult to feel the December chill after five bottles of Riesling.

“Look, all I’m saying is The Nutcracker is, objectively speaking, complete rubbish.”

“I don’t know where you got that notion, my dear, but _I_ think it’s delightful.”

“Oh, come on, angel, you’re just being stubborn. Tchai -- Tch --”

Crowley made a frustrated sound, and Aziraphale nodded in sympathy. They hadn’t been drinking nearly long enough to be truly plastered, but the amount of wine necessary to feel that pleasant warm tippiness also made long Russian names difficult.

“-- ol’ Pete himself hated it, complete bodge job start to finish.”

Aziraphale sniffed. “Artists are a finicky lot. You of all people should know that. D’you remember that -- that fortepiano player from the 18th century?”

“Which fortepiano player from the 18th century?”

“Oh, I don’t remember the name, but you’ll remember her. She was working on that one particular composition, and she would go back and forth over whether it was her greatest triumph or not fit for the fire.”

Crowley snorted. “Angel, that’s every composer who’s ever lived.”

Aziraphale paused. “Well, so it is. My point exactly!” he added triumphantly.

He could _feel_ Crowley rolling her eyes, before the charged moment heralding a snarky comment petered out into a pause.

“... What were we talking about, again?”

Aziraphale frowned and traced back the conversation in his head. It took a bit longer than he might have liked. “The ballet. Nutcracker.”

“Ah, yeah,” Crowley said immediately, seeming to find her rant again. “Absolute tosh, all the way through. It’s so -- the music, right, music’s terrible, once you’ve listened to _real_ Tchaik -- oh, never mind. It’s -- _insipid_ and -- and mincing, never goes anywhere. Anytime he starts building, everything gearing up for one of his big, loud, thumping great crescendoes -- you know, like he does -- suddenly he remembers he’s got to keep everything _nice_ and _light_ and _pretty_ and it all settles back down again, and everyone just feels jerked around.”

The hand which was not wrapped around Aziraphale’s was by this point flying about in the air.

“Well -- it’s not in his usual vein of work,” Aziraphale admitted, feeling warm and pleasant and not quite in the mood to argue simply for the sake of winning. He frowned. “But you’re quite wrong about the quality of the music, my dear. It’s not _mincing_ , it’s…” He searched for a word. “... Measured. Comfortable. It’s _nice._ Which it’s meant to be, to suit the story.”

“The story!” Crowley -- well -- crowed, squeezing Aziraphale’s hand briefly as she made an ‘and that’s another thing’ gesture. “That’s another thing! There isn’t one! Oh, it _pretends_ to have one in the first act, with that one battle, but after that? Not a blessed thing! Blah, blah, magic kingdom, probably a dream, and then it’s just a parade of candy themed pillocks until the curtain goes down. No conflict resolution whatsoever! Mouse king’s still out there, isn’t he? Eh? Who’s going to deal with that? The nutcracker or prince or whatever got trounced last time, and he doesn’t seem to have any sort of army now he’s reclaimed his kingdom. What’s _his_ plan? And what’s Clara’s deal, anyway? What’s she going to do with this new knowledge? There’s a magical kingdom of sentient sweets living somewhere adjacent to her parlor? She’s a _kid,_ despite the creepy aging-up thing they do in the middle. How long do you think those dancing candy canes have got?”

Aziraphale might have pointed out that Crowley herself had mentioned how the tale lent itself to the suggestion that it was all a dream, but he remembered Crowley being quite insistent at some recent point about how “dream endings don’t count,” and Aziraphale was hardly eager to listen to a reiteration of that particular speech.

“Well, most performances are abridged from the original libretto,” he pointed out.

Crowley snorted. “Not _that_ abridged.”

“True enough.”

At this point, Aziraphale was mostly feeling pleasantly settled and content to walk hand-in-hand with Crowley down a deserted street, with the glow of the streetlamps seeming to illuminate the chilly sharpness to the air. Which wasn’t, of course, to say that he wasn’t deriving great amusement from Crowley’s rambling rant.

And that was good, because it didn’t show any sign of slowing.

“I will swear by this, angel, the only Nutcracker adaptation with a jot of story is the Barbie movie. You’ve got character motivation, worldbuilding, a ‘power was inside you all along’ plot point, a redemption arc, could have done without the weird colonial stereotype stuff, a couple of kids who roll with it better than anyone else -- the works. And, _and,_ they fleshed out the mouse king, who’s the best part of the thing anyway, made him into a proper villain with villainous threat-posing resources beyond being a mouse and having an army. They even gave him a bat sidekick, which -- okay, no, hang on, wait -- what _is_ it with rodent villains and bat sidekicks? I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a bat sidekick for a non-rodent villain. But you’ve got the mouse king from Nutcracker, you’ve got the Moriarty stand-in from that Sherlock Holmes film where everyone are mice -- oh, wait, no, damn, you’ve got the weirdly antisemitic Rasputin from that one about the dead Russian princess. Never mind, then. Actually, that was probably _why_ that movie had a bat sidekick, come to think of it.”

“Which dead Russian princess? There were quite a few,” Aziraphale asked, because he had understood absolutely none of that, except for the bit about Rasputin, and he wasn’t entirely sure whether he was too drunk or not drunk enough to talk about Rasputin, but it was certainly one or the other.

“The… oh, one of the last ones, the one people thought might not have been dead,” Crowley replied. “Anyway. The Nutcracker. Horrifically overrated. Tell me otherwise.”

“If you dislike it that much, why did you take me to see it?” Aziraphale asked instead, amused despite himself.

Crowley froze again, but this time it was less like a pause and more like all her muscles had locked up, just a hair out of synchronicity. A muffled sound which seemed a lot like “hrk” escaped her cold-nipped lips.

“I -- well -- that’s --” she tried, and Aziraphale waited patiently, an unstoppable smile starting to spread across his face.

“It’s just the thing you _do_ , these days, for a romantic date in December,” Crowley managed to grumble with almost-convincing gruffness, after two more monosyllabic tries.

Oh, Crowley, dear.

“Oh, _Crowley, dear,_ ” said Aziraphale, ignoring the way Crowley stalwartly cringed away from the outburst. No resistance even of the token variety was offered when Aziraphale let go of Crowley’s hand only to link their arms together and press close. “You lovely thing. I don’t need ballet to be romanced, my darling, but you’re certainly welcome to keep at it. Only if you make sure to follow it up with a very nice kiss, though.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Crowley grumbled, just for the sake of it, as she leaned back into Aziraphale’s embrace and started them walking again. “... A kiss, you say?”

“A _very nice_ kiss,” Aziraphale repeated, for clarity’s sake. “At least.”

Aziraphale was increasingly sure he could hear Crowley’s heartbeat.

Crowley cleared her throat. “And would -- would this be here or at the bookshop?”

Somehow Aziraphale hadn’t quite anticipated this question. “Either. Both, if you like,” he said, after he managed to unstick his throat.

Crowley made a faint whimpering noise. “H -- hang on a second, then.”

Aziraphale stopped, just outside a little pool of lamplight, and turned to face Crowley.

Crowley reached up, slowly but not hesitantly, and gently cupped the sides of Aziraphale’s face with cold fingers. Aziraphale could swear he’d just gotten significantly more drunk. When their lips made contact, somebody sighed, and Aziraphale’s hands drifted up of their own accord to clutch carefully at Crowley’s bony wrists.

The kiss seemed to last forever, and Aziraphale was of the opinion that it was unfairly short.

Crowley pulled back eventually, and looked at Aziraphale with constellations of wonder and sweet surprise in her eyes, and Aziraphale didn’t remind her that she’d taken him to the ballet, as a _date._

“Hello,” he said instead, breathless.

Crowley swallowed. “Hey.”

“Let’s do that at the bookshop, too,” Aziraphale told him, and this time he could definitely feel the faint throb of a heart that had just skipped a beat.

“Yeah, that’s -- let’s do that. But -- first --” Crowley looked more confident, but also like she couldn’t get the words out, resorting instead to a meaningful glance down at Aziraphale’s recently-kissed mouth.

Aziraphale smiled and tilted his head forward, and Crowley kissed him again.

It really was very nice.

“I still didn’t like The Nutcracker,” Crowley said.

“I understand, my love. You’re still wrong. Now let’s get back to the bookshop so we can snog there.”

“ _Now_ you’re talking.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I outed myself as someone who's seen the Barbie Nutcracker movie for this, y'all better appreciate it.


	4. Day 4: Cranberry

Crowley should have known there’d be cocktails.

He should have known from the minute they’d pulled up outside Anathema’s irritatingly picturesque, snow-garlanded house and Aziraphale had said, “Oh, good -- well, somewhere. I’ve forgotten the gifts we procured for everyone! How silly of me. Would you be an absolute dear and double back to the cottage for them? They’ll be just on the cabinet by the parlor, unless I’ve put them somewhere else.”

He should have known from the instant when he gave up trying to lug the surprisingly heavy bag of misbegotten presents to the car in anything resembling a cool or even remotely reasonable way, and accepted his fate, slinging the bag over his shoulder like Father Bloody Christmas -- and if he’d still been in any amount of contact with Hell, he’d never have lived it down, and he wasn’t, but it grated anyway.

He should have known from the second he’d staggered in through the door of Jasmine Cottage, snowflakes melting in his hair and leeching out the gel and arms quivering with the strain of dragging the bag in by his side, and that Salamander kid with the bad haircut bundled over to greet him with a “Hi, Mr. Crowley. You can put the gifts by the tree in the sitting room. Drinks are on the sideboard, grown-up drinks are in the kitchen, and Mr. Aziraphale is getting tips from Madame Tracy, I think, but I’m a bit scared to get close enough to find out what they’re about.”

He should have known from the moment he managed to deposit the bag of presents safely on the table by the tree -- a potted spruce covered in sweets, solar symbols, and candles that gave off a faint gleam of magic -- and heard laughter from elsewhere in the house, with Aziraphale’s rising clear and distinct and with a particular quality that Crowley hadn’t quite identified because, of course, he hadn’t yet known.

There were cocktails.

He found this out when he followed the sound into some sort of converted study, where fir boughs lined the tops of the bookshelves and windows to the back of the house showed The Them running about and tossing snowballs for Dog to bite out of the air, and saw Aziraphale holding a delicate glass filled with some garish red liquid and topped with a sprig of rosemary.

Of course there were cocktails.

The thing about cocktails was that they made Aziraphale a very particular kind of tipsy. The kind of tipsy that made him prone to cheeky comments and showing off. The kind of tipsy that had apparently nearly gotten him into some kind of trouble at a high society party in the nineteenth century, though Crowley had been asleep at the time and suspected that it would be a good few hundred years before Aziraphale could be persuaded to part with the details.

The kind of tipsy, in short, that ended up embarrassing Crowley at parties.

Aziraphale turned, as though tugged by a string, as Crowley slouched into the room, and smiled a thousand watt smile at him. That was normal. But the way he deftly caught Crowley’s hand out of the air as Crowley approached and pressed a long, warm kiss to the back of it, eyes locked earnestly on Crowley’s as he did -- _that_ was Aziraphale and whatever infernal stuff tipped precariously in his other hand.

Thankfully, Madame Tracy had finished putting who knew what ideas in Aziraphale’s head and was turned away to watch the children, but Crowley’s heart still seized in embarrassment.

His cheeks were unpleasantly warm when Aziraphale released his captive hand, but he didn’t move away from Aziraphale’s side. “The presents weren’t on the cabinet by the parlor,” he grumbled, wrapping his still-tingling hand casually around Aziraphale’s middle.

“Thank you for finding them anyway, my dear,” Aziraphale said warmly, even though he didn’t _know_ Crowley had found them, hadn’t just said “bugger this” and spared himself the trouble.

Crowley didn’t point that out.

“Yeah, whatever,” Crowley replied, and tried not to think very much about loving Aziraphale.

Aziraphale planted his free hand on Crowley’s back -- well, technically on Crowley’s back, and that only by virtue of being just a hair too high to be on Crowley’s bum -- and hummed. “You really ought to try the cider. It tastes absolutely wonderful, and Anathema swears up and down that there isn’t any elderflower in it but I suspect she’s being less than truthful. At any rate I haven’t seen both her hands at a time when she’s said it.”

Crowley raised a hand, and a glass of cider appeared in it. Instead of drinking from it, he looked around. “Where is our host, anyway? Would’ve thought she’d be out here making cryptic remarks and serving everyone home-grown tea.”

He actually liked Anathema, despite or perhaps because of the way she openly looked at him sometimes like he was taking a while to get somewhere and it amused her. Not a lot of humans had the balls to do that to Crowley, _and_ she had given him a bottle of very good brandy after the anti-demon wards she had forgotten about putting on the house had given him a massive headache. (He also suspected she had good taste in music, which would be a welcome change of pace, but had yet to manage to confirm.)

“Oh, she’s in the kitchen, preparing a poultice for Sergeant Shadwell, who has been persuaded to give it a try on his feet provided he watches to make sure it hasn’t got any witchcraft. Now,” Aziraphale began, leaning in with a conspiratorial air, “Pepper received some sort of remotely controlled aircraft for Christmas, and is very pleased about it. Brian caught a particularly large frog last week. I recommend you avoid mentioning Sergeant Shadwell’s arm injury, which looks remarkably like a sprained wrist but which will elicit a long and confusing story that seems to revolve around albatrosses and the British Library. Oh, and Newt is dabbling in baking these days, which means both that there are some surprisingly scrummy spice cakes on the sideboard and that bringing it up to Anathema will win you some points.”

“Cheers,” said Crowley, running over the intelligence in his head and giving Aziraphale’s side a squeeze. “Anything else I should know, angel?”

Aziraphale smiled a particularly lascivious smile at him, and Crowley knew he was in trouble.

“Only that if you don’t kiss me now, _I_ shall kiss _you,_ and rather thoroughly, at that.”

“Heaven forbid,” Crowley remarked, rolling the proper name off his tongue with an appropriate level of satirical disdain.

“I seem to recall that it did,” Aziraphale replied, laughter in his voice and his eyes, and at that point Crowley was going to have to kiss him regardless of threats or parties.

Aziraphale’s mouth tasted like cranberries and rum, and Crowley deigned to acknowledge -- at least for a moment -- that, while cocktails were still more trouble than they were worth, perhaps the trouble was worth a bit more than he’d admit.


	5. Day 5: Fire

The Demon Hastur was a demon who liked starting fires, which was fortunate, because the general consensus was that liking things as a demon was only acceptable if it was something evil, and, unless you had a fair bit of imagination, starting fires was almost universally looked upon as evil.

Therefore, it went without saying that Hastur did not particularly like frigid December nights, but he did observe that they seemed to make fleeing a burning hospital even more unpleasant, so he approved.

Hastur laughed a very evil laugh.

Elsewhere, a different demon and an angel were settling down in the back room of an old bookshop, nestled thoroughly up together on a sofa upon which they had spent the last two-hundred-and-some-odd years sitting two feet and seven inches apart. They had come back from an excellent evening at the Royal Albert Hall, followed by a walk through Hyde Park, and had turned in to enjoy the sensation of knowing it was cold outside and being warm and happy where they were.

The Demon Crowley pressed into the Angel Aziraphale’s side and sighed a deep sigh of relief, comfort, happiness, and utter contentment. “You all right, angel?”

“More than.” Aziraphale sighed an even deeper sigh, and snuggled further in. “Oh, _Crowley…_ ”

“Mm?” asked Crowley, finding it difficult to open his eyes and rather liking the feeling that he didn’t need to.

“It’s a bit dreadful how very all right I am.” Aziraphale didn’t sound perturbed by this, only pleased and wondering.

“How d’you figure?”

Aziraphale nuzzled his nose against Crowley’s cheek, and Crowley did open his eyes and tilt his head back down to look at him. Aziraphale looked radiant, not in the way that his former employers looked Radiant, but in the sort of way that came from personal bliss and quite a lot of love.

Crowley felt really quite warm in the area of his chest, and suddenly he was even more aware than usual that he would do anything for Aziraphale, anything at all, and not think twice about it.

“I know it’s quite silly and objectively untrue, and very probably inherently impossible, but being here with you, _together,_ and safe and cozy and -- well -- _home_ \-- I can’t help but feel that everything is all right with the world. It _must_ be. You’re ever so lovely, my dear.”

“That’s not silly at all!” said Crowley, indignant, and he wriggled around under the blanket covering their laps to tuck his head into the warm, soft, wonderful curve of Aziraphale’s neck.

He believed in this emphatically, and even when one wasn’t a demon, a certain amount of belief had a way of doing things in the world, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that a few things started happening around that time.

Or ceasing to happen, as it were.

Hastur frowned as the hospital fire went out. He might have said “Oi!” or something to that effect, except that there was no one in particular to say it to. The efforts of the fire brigade had been meeting absolutely no success, and there wasn’t another demon around who might have interfered just to spite him.

Demonic fires didn’t just go out on their own, though. At least, Hastur’s didn’t, and that was a point of pride.

He looked at the building again, and it failed to burst into flames.

He scowled.

Still no effect.

This was unprecedented, and Hastur didn’t like unprecedented things. He didn’t like paperwork, either, but that had six thousand years’ worth of precedence, and there was always someone to torment in Hell if he finished.

Best not to mention this to anyone.

In the back room of a bookshop in London, an angel and a demon fell asleep together on the couch.


	6. Day 6: Sleigh Bells

Aziraphale was working on a book restoration when the front door of the bookshop clattered -- open, shut -- and dragging feet scuffled across the bookshop and into the back room.

Someone flopped onto the sofa behind Aziraphale with a loud, ragged sigh. 

“Ugh,” said Crowley.

“Mm,” said Aziraphale absentmindedly, peering down through his spectacles at his work.

A moment of silence, but for the rustling sounds of Crowley turning over laboriously on the sofa.

“ _Ugh,_ ” said Crowley, more determinedly.

Aziraphale hid a small smile and kept his eyes on the page he was repairing. “Bad day, my love?” he asked mildly.

“You don’t know the _half_ of it.” The sounds of Crowley flopping again, and Aziraphale was fairly certain that he could hear a leg being thrown over the back of the sofa. “I have been standing in a queue in a shopping center for seven hours, _in December._ I’ve been pestered and jostled all day and yelled at by a woman in a jangly hat for having coffee spilled on me. And if I never hear another saccharine, secular Christmas song, it’ll be too soon.”

“A terrible fate, I’m sure,” Aziraphale replied, as blandly as he could manage. “Although… being that the rise of saccharine, secular Christmas songs was _your_ infernal doing, my dear, there are some who would suggest that this might be something akin to poetic justice.”

Crowley made a dismayed sound, and threw their hands in the air. Aziraphale was still stalwartly avoiding looking over at them, but the energy was unmistakable. “That was _work!_ I was just trying to get by! It’s not like it was my idea of a good time!”

Aziraphale made a flat sound of judgmental disbelief.

“All right, all right,” Crowley grumbled. “But it’s not my fault it caught on like it did!” They made a frustrated noise, muffled by their hands. “Why couldn’t the world have been scheduled to end before the 1930s?”

“Why, indeed,” Aziraphale remarked wryly.

Crowley’s attention-seeking efforts gained a last-ditch quality. “They play it _all day long,_ angel. They don’t even do that in _Hell!_ ”

“You poor dear,” said Aziraphale, barely holding back laughter.

“ _Angel!_ ”

“Yes, yes, all right,” Aziraphale caved, rolling his eyes fondly (and, pointedly, _not_ making a show of it) as he put down his instruments and rose from the desk. He turned to find Crowley draped dramatically across the sofa, looking admittedly rather the worse for wear.

Crowley scrambled up to allow Aziraphale a spot to settle down in, and then immediately (shamelessly) flung themself back down across Aziraphale’s legs. Aziraphale, for his part, summoned a mug of cocoa before acquiescing to run his fingers through Crowley’s hair, scratching gently along the scalp.

Crowley made a valiant effort at a few more grumbling noises and practically melted into Aziraphale’s lap.

“Why on Earth did you put yourself through all that in the first place?” Aziraphale asked, finding himself pitying and amused all at once.

Crowley mumbled unintelligibly before they spoke up. “Present for Warlock. He’s had a rough year, wanted to do something ni -- good-quality.”

“Mm,” Aziraphale hummed, forbearing from remarking upon how sweet that was. “And where are the spoils of your endeavor?”

Crowley lethargically patted their jacket, where the inner pocket would be. “Tickets to a convention he’s been wanting to go to. High-profile sort of thing, less trouble to get them in the new year, but having the early ones will impress his classmates.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Is he old enough to go to conventions? How will he get there?”

Crowley grunted and took off their glasses. Aziraphale immediately started scratching at where the earpieces sat, which was a good move, if the sound Crowley made was any indication. “They’ve got a chauffeur, and his parents pay even less attention now he’s old enough to start doing things on his own. He’s a smart kid, he’ll say he’s staying with a friend for a week and they won’t lift a finger.”

Aziraphale hummed again, not entirely sure what to say. He had known for some time that Crowley kept tabs on Warlock, but it had never seemed quite right to ask. He missed the boy too, of course, even though Warlock had been growing out of the need for a nanny or a particularly friendly gardener by the time Armageddon had started to heat up. He remembered how lonely they’d found him, how bright and inquisitive a child and how unaware that his parents had no time for him.

Crowley made a noise, and it pulled Aziraphale back down to Earth, looking down to find two yellow eyes gazing back up at him.

“The thingy’s just on the other side of London. Thought maybe he could pop in, stay with us for a couple of days. If you want.”

Aziraphale had to take a moment to silently brush Crowley’s hair out of their eyes while he parsed through the swell of affection tightening his throat. “That would be wonderful.” Then, unable to resist, he teased, “Not everyone is lucky enough to have a former nanny who would brave the unspeakable horrors of the shopping center for them.”

“ _Shut up,_ ” said Crowley, in the tone that meant the compliment had hit home and they were embarrassed by it.

“Yes, dear.”

“That place is a nightmare. An actual nightmare.”

“So I’m told.”

“I’m serious, angel. If I ever hear sleigh bells again, we’re moving to the Andromeda galaxy. We can take your books. It’ll be nice.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Aziraphale soothed, took a sip of cocoa, and surreptitiously miracled away the string of little silver bells which had been hanging merrily on the door to the flat above.


	7. Day 7: Silent Night

The drive back to London from Anathema’s holiday party was peaceful. The party had gone on further into the night than expected, as all good parties did -- the Them had gotten a reprieve from bedtime, which Aziraphale suspected had less to do with any lingering infernal power Adam might possess than with his impressively effective puppy-dog eyes -- and neither Aziraphale nor Crowley minded making the trip home in the middle of night. Truthfully, Aziraphale preferred it, as there were fewer drivers on the long stretches of open road through the countryside, and Aziraphale didn’t need to worry quite so much about Crowley’s berserker-esque driving.

Crowley seemed to be driving a bit less terrifyingly than usual, anyhow. Perhaps it was due to the fact that there was snow drifting unhurriedly to the ground around them, where it gathered into the sort of lovely layer of fluffy white that you almost never saw in London these days, or perhaps because they’d spent the evening carousing with people they cared about and had spent most of it holding hands. It probably wasn’t because of any new appreciation for the principles of safe driving or what driving like he was on fire did to Aziraphale’s heart rate.

Regardless, the cabin of the Bentley was almost idyllic in its calm quiet. The interior was warm, with just enough chill drifting in through the closed windows to nip pleasantly at the face, and the smooth rumble of the engine -- at least, Aziraphale assumed it was the engine -- providing a steady, familiar backdrop for the satisfying silence. Both occupants were engaged in their own comfortable little realm of thought, glancing over at the other every now and then but generally content to share the same space. About an hour into the drive, they had glanced toward each other at the same moment, and Crowley had smiled a soft and lovely smile at Aziraphale that Aziraphale hoped he would never get used to. 

Aziraphale was enjoying the feeling of idle contentment, a newfound luxury now that he no longer had to worry about -- well, anything. So when the snowfall stopped and the clouds cleared to reveal a starry winter night, he didn’t notice immediately. He drew in a breath when he did, though he couldn’t have told why, and looked out into the simple beauty of the world around them for a minute or two before he came to a decision.

“Pull over, my dear.”

Crowley looked over at him with a questioning noise -- this had been the first conversation in well over an hour -- and complied, drifting over onto the shoulder of the abandoned road and cutting the engine. The silence washed in like a pleasant balm.

“What is it?”

Aziraphale scooted over across the bench seat before responding, nudging a baffled but willing Crowley into position to cuddle against, sides pressed together so that they could look out at the scene. “I thought perhaps we might stay here for a little while and take in the scenery. We’re in no rush to get anywhere, after all, and it is rather lovely.”

Crowley made an unintelligible noise and shifted around to throw an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders and draw him in closer. “Yeah. Yeah, we can do that.”

“Are you sure you won’t get cold?” Aziraphale worried, discovering a hole in his plan now that the sound of the engine had faded away. He started to pull away, about to backtrack or perhaps to summon a blanket or several.

Crowley pulled him back down. “I’ll be fine, angel. The Bentley knows better than to get cold.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale let himself be prodded lovingly back into place, relaxing into Crowley’s side with an appreciative sigh. “It is beautiful, isn’t it? The snow, and the sky.”

Crowley hummed, nuzzling his nose into Aziraphale’s hair. “I find snow’s a pain in the ass, mostly. Gets in your shoes no matter how careful you are. Like ice cream getting your fingers sticky.” A pause, before he admitted, “... it does look nice when you don’t have to deal with it, though. Looks nice from right _here._ ”

His thumb came up to rub at Aziraphale’s shoulder while he said it, and Aziraphale’s hand drifted to Crowley’s knee and squeezed in response. He knew the feeling. Almost everything was nicer with Crowley at his side.

They sat and watched the scene together, taking in the faint sparkle of snow in the light of the waxing moon. Crowley collected Aziraphale’s hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it.

“It’s so _still_ and quiet,” Aziraphale remarked eventually, wonder leaking into his tone.

“Yeah. Reminds you of old times, dunnit? Back when the landscape outnumbered the humans. Clumps of them here and there, and all this in between. Going out here used to be an adventure, something to brag about to your mates.”

“Mm,” Aziraphale replied. “The world has changed quite a lot since then.”

“‘S what it does,” Crowley remarked, not unkindly.

“And so has the sky,” Aziraphale said in a tone almost of revelation, though of course he’d known this for a very long time. What was the faint feeling of surprise in his chest? “Things have _moved_ , haven’t they? Stars shifting and coming in and out.”

“Yeah!” Crowley agreed, a hint of enthusiasm in his voice. “Some of them were created later than others, of course. Y’see… er… _that one,_ right over there, angel? That one appeared in the twelfth century. Think I watched that, actually. Bloody boring in the twelfth century...”

Aziraphale hummed, happily looking where Crowley pointed and listening to him ramble.

At length, Crowley settled down and Aziraphale quietly observed, “It’s nice, isn’t it, seeing that… that even something which seems so fixed and -- and unalterable can change, eventually?”

Crowley froze against Aziraphale’s side, and Aziraphale turned from the stars to look at him, a sharp thing bathed in soft shadow under the night sky. His glasses were off and he was gazing at Aziraphale with a look of wonder and devastation which mirrored Aziraphale’s own.

“Yeah,” he repeated thickly. “Nice.”

Aziraphale couldn’t bear the soft devotion in Crowley’s eyes, wanted to keep it there forever. He reached out to cup Crowley’s cheek in his hand and said, “You know, if it didn’t, we would have made it.”

“Angel,” said Crowley, and it was barely a whisper.

Aziraphale kissed him.

Crowley clung to him and kissed back.

Eventually, one or the other of them pulled away, and Aziraphale scattered a few kisses across Crowley’s nose and chin before leaning back to find Crowley red enough to be visible even in the faint monochrome light of the moon and stars.

He waited, but Crowley seemed disinclined to come up with something to say, so Aziraphale gave him an impish little smile and told him, “Well, I suppose we _could_ stay right here long enough for the sky to change again, but I confess I’m rather too fond of my bookshop for that.”

Crowley cleared his throat and looked away, blushing even more furiously. Aziraphale squeezed his knee, smitten. “Right. Bookshop. Yeah. Uh, do you want to…”

He trailed off, nodding vaguely over at the passenger’s seat, and Aziraphale smiled warmly at him and disentangled himself from Crowley’s confusion of limbs, sliding back into his seat and giving Crowley space to compose himself in.

Once the Bentley had roared back to life and started rocketing back down the barely-visible road, a bony hand reached across the seat to clasp around Aziraphale’s. Aziraphale turned his hand over to hold Crowley’s properly, and they remained linked in the middle of the seat for the rest of the drive home.


	8. Day 8: Choir

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this while very sleep-deprived, so let's see if it's any good

Aziraphale was puttering around rearranging books (keeping a constantly shifting organizational system helped deter customers as well as just being fun) and humming along to his music when Crowley burst in through the door in their usual haphazard fashion.

They stopped short, wrinkling their nose. “ _Seriously,_ Aziraphale?”

“Mm?” Aziraphale asked, unperturbed, and glanced over at Crowley with a smile. “What are you talking about, sweetheart?”

Crowley flushed but was undeterred. “This was one of _four_ places in the city without Christmas music on!”

“I don’t see how that’s a problem. You like Handel.” Aziraphale turned to put al-Kindi where the Roman comics had been, and idly hummed in time with the melody.

Crowley sputtered and followed Aziraphale deeper into the shop. “I liked the _fun_ ones! This dull choir stuff’s another matter completely! _This_ has never put anyone in the mood to celebrate anything. You really want your bookshop sounding like -- like the inside of a church?!”

“My dear,” Aziraphale smiled wryly at Crowley out of the corner of his eye, “unless I’m much mistaken and you’ve been engaging in tremendously odd pastimes, you’ve only been in a church once, and that with no choir present.”

As hoped, Crowley turned a fetching shade of red and tried valiantly to change the subject. “I’ve seen movies!”

Aziraphale hummed the most blatantly amused hum he could manage. “I was rather under the impression your taste in cinema ran more toward explosions than great choral works.”

“I -- you -- _shut up!_ You can’t even _dance_ to this!”

“ _You_ can’t dance to anything,” Aziraphale pointed out, and finished shelving the last book in his little stack. He smoothed his hands down his waistcoat and turned to properly take Crowley in.

Crowley’s cheeks and nose had been chapped by the wind, hair atangle, and they were wearing an obstinate little frown which had very little in the way of heat behind it. Aziraphale loved them terribly. “It’s dancing, whether you like it or not, angel.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Aziraphale, who had realized something and was no longer paying any attention at all. “Come here, my darling, so I can show you something.”

He took Crowley’s hand, which threw them quite literally off-kilter -- Aziraphale could feel them stumble as he tugged them back with him toward the center of the shop. He left Crowley, baffled, in the central rotunda, and disappeared briefly into the stacks, reemerging with his prize.

He handed the book carefully to Crowley, who took it with a consternated look, and peered down at the cover. “ _Le Livre des Esprits_? I don’t know what you’re after, angel, this is pretty lightweight as far as occult stuff goes.”

“This book,” Aziraphale told them, stepping in close and laying his hand lightly atop theirs, “was in my bag. In 1941.”

He glanced up, from the book in Crowley’s hand to the look on their face, and watched Crowley turn their face sharply up to look at him, eyebrows raised almost beseechingly behind their sunglasses. Aziraphale smiled softly at them, and waited patiently as Crowley turned their gaze back down.

“It looks, uh,” Crowley cleared their throat thickly. “It looks good. Like new.”

“Better, in my opinion,” Aziraphale replied, a little grin curling the corners of his lips.

“You have hundreds of books. You practically toss a coin every time you go looking for one. You really kept track of this?” Crowley’s voice had risen in pitch, just enough to notice if one was looking for it.

“More or less,” said Aziraphale, and plucked the book gently out of Crowley’s unresisting hands to lay it carefully aside on a nearby endtable. Crowley was looking helplessly at him when he turned back, and allowed their arms to be rearranged by Aziraphale. They only seemed to blink back to Earth when Aziraphale clasped their left hand in his right and lifted the linked hands to shoulder height, Crowley’s other hand propped on his hip.

“Aziraphale?”

“Yes, dear?”

“What are we doing?”

“Nothing in particular, at the moment. If you’ll cooperate, I was thinking we might dance shortly.”

Aziraphale nudged them gently, and Crowley got with the program, swaying back and forth in time and looking only mildly bewildered.

“... Why?”

Aziraphale stifled a smile by pressing a kiss to Crowley’s shoulder. “There was a dance hall flyer in the Bentley, you know. When you drove me home after the church. I’m afraid I made some assumptions.”

From above, the sound of Crowley tipping their head back with an anguished groan. “Thought I’d hidden that. Well, at the time. Found it afterwards and just hoped to Hell you hadn’t noticed.”

This time Aziraphale didn’t bother hiding his smile. “I’m afraid I did.”

Crowley, pink-cheeked, took a bit of initiative and promptly gave Aziraphale a little half-spin. Aziraphale gamely yelped in delighted surprise before continuing. “We didn’t manage to go dancing at the time, my love, so I thought we might begin to make up the deficit now.”

A high and involuntary-sounding whine rose from Crowley’s chest, and they averted their face while continuing to lead Aziraphale in a leisurely, undemanding sway.

Aziraphale’s chest filled with something warm and glad.

Eventually, Crowley let out another overly agonized groan and dropped their forehead into Aziraphale’s shoulder. “I can’t believe we’re dancing our first dance to Handel’s bloody Messiah.”

Aziraphale hummed and nudged his nose against Crowley’s cheek, taking care to speak softly against their ear. “We’re not dancing to Handel, my darling. We’re dancing with each other.”

Crowley, to their credit, lifted their head from Aziraphale’s shoulder and pulled back to look at him, seeming on the edge of overwhelmed and held together mostly by the nominal distance afforded by their glasses. “Angel. That is one of the corniest lines I have heard in the last decade.”

Aziraphale smiled widely. “Well, it has been rather a busy decade. I do have quite a bit of catching up to do.”

Crowley made a sound like the start of a laugh, which petered off into something short and strangled when their furious blush took over. They cleared their throat and tucked a very willing Aziraphale closer into the embrace and began to lead in earnest.

They stayed there, dancing (technically), not exactly well but certainly fondly, for as long as they cared to, and nobody disturbed them.

And if the music slowly shifted from the choral grandeur of the Messiah to something soft and mellow and romantic, well, nobody there paid any particular attention.


	9. Day 9: Chestnuts

Ayesha was not having a good day. The Regent Park's refreshment kiosks were absolute pants at keeping out the frigid winter air, the sky was a sulky grey threatening to burst into freezing rain at any moment, and halfway through their shift their phone was practically dead due to forgetting to plug it in the night before and playing Candy Crush between customers to deal with the discomfort. (Also they had fallen down a Wikipedia hole and resurfaced to find that it was 4 A.M., but that was distressingly usual.)

This left them leaning against the counter, crossing their arms to keep themself from fiddling with the coffee machine or their hijab, and watching the few intrepid park-goers in an attempt to pass the time. Mostly it was stubborn old men and jogger moms with strollers and one bunch of rowdy teenagers, which is why Ayesha could have wept with relief when they spotted the obviously queer couple strolling across the lawn.

They were middle-aged and obviously in love, which was enough to send Ayesha spiraling up to a higher plane of existence, and both generally masculine-presenting. The plump, blonde one had the fussy flamboyance of an older gay man, even under his extravagance of warm layers, and his happiness seemed to radiate out from him in smiles directed toward every living thing in sight -- especially toward his visibly rambling partner. This one was ginger and painfully thin, and had all the painstaking coolness of an aging rock star, complete with sunglasses even on this, the greyest of days, and no allowances for protective layers against the cold at all, and Ayesha was getting unusually certain “he/him” vibes, despite what they were fairly sure were women’s jeans. He walked with his arm threaded through the cheerful one’s, and between the frenetic quality to his gesturing and the way he stumbled on a rock and didn’t even pause in whatever he was saying, Ayesha’s “fellow ADHDer”-dar was starting to ping.

Ayesha watched them wander closer, until the blonde one said something that made the ginger break off from his topic and turn to look at him for the first time, scowling. He said something short, which didn’t seem to have any particular effect on the blonde’s good mood, and a brief exchange followed ending with the ginger turning away in the universal body language of an eye-roll, and visibly spotting the kiosk. He turned briefly back to his companion and then broke away to head toward Ayesha and their sovereign shack of snacks and coldness. The blonde, abandoned, looked confused for a moment before his gaze, too, alighted on the kiosk and an expression of such smittenness and joy broke across his face that Ayesha had to look away.

Ayesha turned to fiddle in a busy-like way with the crisps, not wanting to look like they’d been staring. Which they had. But. _Be cool._

It was easier than anticipated, considering how much brainspace was being taken up with _Damn, it’s cold._

Ginger-on-a-stick sauntered up to the counter, one hand already reaching behind him, presumably to pull a wallet out of what must be a skintight pocket. Ayesha, already impressed at the thought, wondered how he managed.

“Small sugar chestnuts,” he said by way of greeting, and shoved his hands into his pockets and pressed his arms to his sides in the universal manner of someone who's cold and doesn't want to admit it.

“Sure,” said Ayesha, reaching down to open the display bin. Their eyes caught on a colorful planetarium flyer poking out from the monochrome shirt-jacket setup, and -- _why not_ \-- they went for it.

“Are you and your partner gonna watch the meteor shower tonight?”

Light. Smooth. Cool. Success.

Ginger looked back up at them from the chestnuts, eyebrows a tick higher than before. His mouth went through a triptych of unvoiced sounds before settling on, “Planning on it.” Ayesha could see a quick second of assessment, despite the sunglasses. “You an astronomy student?”

“Nah.” Ayesha turned their focus to opening up the fiddly little paper bag. It was a medium bag, because it was cold and miserable and this dude was getting his partner a treat because they loved each other and Ayesha bloody well wanted to. “I’m social sciences. My best friend’s datemate is, though, and got us into it. We’re going to watch it from our roof tonight, if the clouds clear.” They glanced grimly at the sky. _And if I don’t catch pneumonia by then._

Ginger glanced upward as though only just noticing the oppressive heaviness of the cloud cover, thick with unshed rain. Ayesha bumped the “probably ADHD” meter up a notch. “Yeah,” he said, as though thinking about something else. “Those look like right bastards. Probably rain themselves out long before that, though. You gonna be all right?”

It wasn’t _that_ big a nonsequitur, but Ayesha still stopped and blinked. Ginger looked aloof and unconcerned, but for some reason…

“I’ll be fine,” Ayesha told him, even though they might have to walk home in the rain because their bicycle had a flat, and the forecast hadn’t said rain today so they hadn’t brought a raincoat. They handed him the bag of sugar chestnuts with a little thanks-for-asking smile. “One small sugar chestnuts.”

They were halfway through pulling out change for the fiver he’d dropped on the counter when he said in a slightly baffled tone, “Isn’t this a medium?”

Ayesha raised their eyebrows at him. “You gonna rat me out to my boss?”

He raised his eyebrows at Ayesha. Ayesha got a vague impression of approval. “Wasn’t planning to.”

“Then there you go. And your change.” They handed back the change, which was immediately dumped into the tip jar.

At this point, the blonde completed his heretofore-unnoticed approach. “ _Crowley!_ ” he exclaimed delightedly, apparently without anything particular to follow it up with.

“Angel. Have some sugar chestnuts.” Ginger -- Crowley -- passed the bag to him, voice and expression suddenly warm, and when their fingers tangled briefly Ayesha felt rather as though they were watching a kiss. They looked away.

“Oh, how sweet, my dear, thank you -- and hullo, how are you?”

Ayesha looked back to find “angel” beaming at them, goodwill evident on his round, pleasant face, and they found themself smiling back and saying, “I’m good, thanks. You?”

The man beamed, if possible, even harder, and replied, “Oh, just lovely. Except --” and as Ayesha watched, he produced an aura of innocence so prim and righteous Ayesha could practically taste it -- “it’s getting a bit warm for me, under all these woolens. Crowley, would you mind --”

“I suppose.” And Crowley let a few scarves be looped around his neck -- “Oh, there, so you won’t have to carry them” -- without protest.

He spared Ayesha a nod as the two of them turned away, and Ayesha tipped their chin back in acknowledgement, feeling something fuzzy and polka-dotted in their chest as they watched the couple drift away, immediately tucked together again and saying, “Eat your chestnuts, angel. How are they?” and “Oh, absolutely scrumptious, just the thing, how did you know? Here, have one, I insist.”

It started to rain twenty minutes after the two of them disappeared down the path, but, weirdly, none of it made it into the kiosk through the usual cracks and corners and open windows. At the end of their shift Ayesha resignedly tried their phone only to find it still had battery _and_ a notification for a free Uber ride. And when they got home, warm and dry and significantly faster than they expected to, their clean sheets had been taken from the hamper (where they had lived for the past two weeks) and put back on the mattress.

 _Huh,_ Ayesha thought, and decided the universe was having some unusually magnanimous fun.

The clouds _did_ rain themselves out, and Ayesha, on the roof with a thermos of chocolate and the people they cared about, watched burning chunks of rock streak prettily across the sky, enjoying it doubly with the knowledge that, somewhere in London, an absolutely besotted pair of settled, middle-aged lovers was doing the same.


End file.
